Treffer: A New Method for Extracting Structural Planes Based on A* Algorithm and Region Growing.

The attitude and morphology of structural planes in rock masses decisively affect the properties of the macroscopic medium, and their identification and quantification pose a significant challenge in microscopic analysis. Based on the combination of the A* algorithm and region growing method, a new method for the extraction and quantification analysis of 2D fractures on structural planes is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the method of digital image processing techniques is used to perform weighted averaging and cubic transformation of grayscale values on fracture images. Secondly, the A* algorithm is used to find the seed points inside the fractures, and region growing is applied to obtain the initial binary image of the fractures. Then, morphological methods and an automatic hole-filling algorithm are employed to smooth, fill holes, and remove noise from the initial fractures, resulting in a complete binary image of the fractures. Finally, an iterative binary image algorithm is used to extract the skeleton of the fractures, and parameters such as fracture length, width, area, and azimuth are calculated by utilizing both the complete fracture binary image and its skeleton. The method was programmed using MATLAB platform to obtain the fracture parameters easily. Compared to the commonly used combined Otsu algorithm and region growing algorithm, the method proposed in this paper effectively reduces the impact of noise and uneven illumination, showing significant improvement in the segmentation of non-fracture areas with grayscale values similar to those of fractures. The method can achieve better segmentation effect and more accurate parameters extraction despite the presence of fine cracks with more interference in the background. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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